Latest Posts by 222mechanicalgoats - Page 2

If your plot feels flat, STUDY it! Your story might be lacking...

Stakes - What would happen if the protagonist failed? Would it really be such a bad thing if it happened?

Thematic relevance - Do the events of the story speak to a greater emotional or moral message? Is the conflict resolved in a way that befits the theme?

Urgency - How much time does the protagonist have to complete their goal? Are there multiple factors complicating the situation?

Drive - What motivates the protagonist? Are they an active player in the story, or are they repeatedly getting pushed around by external forces? Could you swap them out for a different character with no impact on the plot? On the flip side, do the other characters have sensible motivations of their own?

Yield - Is there foreshadowing? Do the protagonist's choices have unforeseen consequences down the road? Do they use knowledge or clues from the beginning, to help them in the end? Do they learn things about the other characters that weren't immediately obvious?

📝 Emotion, atmosphere and environment: A writing exercise for show-don't-tell

Before we go any further, I want to make it clear that I'm not aggressively against telling. Sometimes telling works for a whole bunch of valid reasons. If you know me at all, you'll be aware of where I stand on the issue of narrow, prescriptive writing rules (if you don't know me, hi, I despise narrow, prescriptive writing rules)

But "How do I show instead of telling?" is still a thing a lot of newer writers have difficulty with and that's what I'd like to dig into. So here's a writing exercise you could try to help build depth and atmosphere around the emotion your character is feeling...

🧠 First of all, pick an emotional experience.

For illustrative purposes, I'm going with LOSS. Then express that emotional experience in ways that can be perceived physically. The following are just suggestions, not an exhaustive list.

🎨 How could the emotion be expressed as a colour?

Grey, maybe. Slate grey. Or a muted petrol blue, perhaps.

🔊 How could the emotion be expressed as a sound?

Deep silence interrupted only by the sound of a ticking clock.

👋 How could the emotion be expressed as a physical action?

Your hand reaching to grasp for comfort out of habit and hope, fingers curling around something remembered, then dropping back to the coldness of the other side of the bed, empty.

🌄 How could the emotion be expressed as a weather condition or natural phenomenon?

The storm passed an hour ago, leaving only an occasional flurry of sleet that melts on contact with the window, sliding down the glass like tears. Outside, a tree that shed its leaves in autumn bows in tired silhouette against the halo of a single streetlight.

🏡 How could the emotion be expressed as a room?

Your nightstand holds the bottle of water you filled before trudging upstairs at midnight, your phone still plugged in even though the battery was full three hours ago, and the glasses you'll put on again as soon as you wake up after sleep eventually manages to swallow you. The nightstand on the other side of the bed holds a small tear-off calendar showing November eighteenth even though it's now January second and a book lying open and face-down with the spine sinking into itself. In the corner of the room, there's a chair with clothes carelessly draped over it a month and a half ago that you still can't bring yourself to put in the laundry. It's four o'clock in the morning and you'd give anything to hear breathing that wasn't your own.

You could try it for different emotions and different situations, in isolation and then connected to something you're in the process of writing.

How could anger, for example, be expressed differently in an office environment compared to a wilderness landscape? How could joy be shown in summer versus winter? How could fear be embodied in high fantasy compared to cyberpunk?

If relating environments to emotions doesn't click for you straight away, could you focus on single-sense experiences for a while? What colour is regret? What does anticipation taste like?

If you have synesthesia (hello, fellow synesthetes!) this could be a wild ride, but hopefully it'll also be fun and useful for anyone having difficulty connecting to the idea of show-don't-tell.

Happy writing! 💜

Highkey was inspired n wrote some lyrics, hope you don't mind??? can't do melodies for shit but uhh i think this is nice for being written in 10 minutes lol

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good. christianity and catholicism: creature,

holy, human. oh, joyous line. oh, joyous life.

arms up for celestial beings, divinity abound,

heart wide and smile big and the priest prays,

his hands in yours, and the church cross stands

before the sunrise, unbowed in the face of adversity

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good. christianity and catholicism: creature,

holy, human. be sure to conform, else they won't

accept you into the kingdom of heaven. oh, joyous.

joyous line, joyous life. arms up for celestial beings,

divinity abound in the farms i raised myself on,

sun setting on fields of my own making; conformity.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

the scripture goes like this: be sure to fear God;

He is good, and He'll kill you if you don't pray

in the morning, believe so much He sucks out your

soul. conformity in the face of adversity so you can't

fight back-- don't worry, it'll be alright, this is your

promise not to burn in damnation. don't make Him

punish you, don't be gay, don't question, don't worry

be sure to fear God because He put His roots in our

family's tractor and now if we don't listen and pray,

hearts wide and smiling, He'll send the priest to stick

a knife in our sister josie who went and got an abortion,

and be sure to fear God because He'll kill cousin georgie

who's not allowed to use the pronouns she (he) wants

and be sure to fear God because God is good; suicide's

not allowed in this land of divinity: conformity in the face of adversity. God is good, God is good, God is good.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

please, take a seat, you're going to need it, little bad guy.

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why:

sky's so high in montana, mountain cliff and clouds cry

God's going to murder america and let me tell you why

Me, trying to explain my obsession with southern gothic and weird alt country: look I don’t know why, but if a song is acoustic, in a minor key, and about murder, god, or america, i just go absolutely batshit

i am so mentally unstable and i am so small

i would pay actual money to see that

gonna put quackity in the blade of marmora uniform 

pretty!!

old minecraft landscapes

bro this is so cool!! i love the lighting, and the watersplashes (??? idk what to call them) are god tier

new adventure

Technoblade and hallucinations

I am very very new to the dream smp fandom, but can I just say that I love it? It’s fucking awesome. I just started watching canon two days ago, and I’m hooked, ladies and gentlemen. I have absolutely no idea what’s going on, but I’m hooked. 

I came here for a reason, though, not just to introduce myself, though that might be a good place to start. Hi! I’m strawberry frog, you can call me frog, or strawberry, I don’t care which, and I suffer from hallucinations, which is why last night when I stumbled upon the subsection of fanfiction where Technoblade has hallucinations, it made me cry so hard I called my friend up in a huff and a fuss and she thought I was dying. I was so happy. I was so happy, guys, I can’t remember the last time I was this happy. (Ha, I’m saying guys like I have an audience-- remember, kids, words are just for the void. Nobody knows me, and so long as I don’t know them they can’t hurt me.) 

Technoblade has hallucinations! Technoblade has hallucinations! Technoblade has schizophrenia in AUs, Technoblade has hallucinations and they cause him problems and they cause him paranoia and distress and all of the things that they cause me and it’s not just part of some half-assed trope where the hallucinations are just a false diagnosis and it’s really just magic powers, superpowers, supernatural influence. No. Technoblade has powers, sure, but the hallucinations aren’t his powers. They’re a side-affect, and a harmful one at that, and I have spent too many long nights hiding alone in my bed from monsters only I can see waiting for this. It makes me so happy, in that twisted, cruel way that being seen in distress strikes your soul like midnight church bells. 

My hallucinations are debilitating. I spend days awake at a time, simply hearing my best friend’s death cry on repeat and wondering if this time it’s real or if I’m being stupid again and wondering when it’s going to stop. Technoblade tries his best to drown out the cries for blood, I do my best to drown out my fucked-up delusions and the people I see in my side-view mirror who disappear when I look twice. 

I just. I want to know, how did a fucking minecraft fandom make me feel more seen that anything else I’ve ever consumed in my entire life? Please, somebody, tell me. I’ll even present my application for people to talk to me about it. 

See? Here: PROS AND CONS OF TALKING TO ME ABOUT THE DREAM SMP

pros: 

-I will love you forever

-I know basically like two things so you can explain everything to me in incredible detail and I will listen with great attention and interest and it will make you feel important

-Maybe I’ll write something for you one day

-I’m a lesbian

-I’m the funniest person I know

-I like Technoblade

cons:

-None that I foresee

So. Talk to me?